Originally Posted by
N_LaRUE I'll write more later but to put it simply, the Commonwealth is meaningless
I should have stopped there...
The Commonwealth is built on the back of the British Empire. It's the group of countries that used to belong to it (and possibly some others who joined). It was originally referred to as the British Commonwealth and having the Queen as it's head, which she still is, gives it that impression all the more that it's for the UK's benefit.
Countries are members of the Commonwealth, which they pay to be a part of, if you asked most people in those countries who are a part of it, not many, if virtually none, would know that.
Being a member doesn't provide citizens with any special status within the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is more about shared values, culture and language than anything else. There's some nonsense about keeping peace and other blather but at the end the day it's an entirely meaningless entity as far as I'm concerned.
It also doesn't help that a lot of the countries are still constitutional monarchies either, a lot with the Queen as the head of state. Like Canada and Australia for instance.
There never is any knowledge passed around of what it means to be a part of this group of countries or what benefit there is. In a sense, it would appear mostly ceremonial.
As each country within the Commonwealth is independent and it's own entity it has control of it's borders, laws and so on so things like immigration are still treated no different between the countries than if someone from outside the Commonwealth was applying.
There was recent talk about creating a Commonwealth 'free movement' law between Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK but I don't see that getting very far.
So if you're wondering, yes my immigration to Australia was no different than if I was American applying to immigrate there.
Same goes for the UK.
Any agreements between countries with regards to trade, immigration and so on is between those countries. So for example, the UK and Australia used to have some agreements on immigration but those have since stopped as far as I know.
Along with the Commonwealth I'd also like to see constitutional monarchies finished as well. Those countries who still have the Queen as the head of state pay for that privilege. Something that again, most of those who live in those countries do not know.
When I say pay, I do mean millions. I believe it was over $54M CAD for Canada. Similar for Australia.
So yeah, I don't have the most positive opinions on either of those two things.
